July 06, 2005
Press Confidentiality
At the beginning of the whole sordid Plame ordeal, I was firmly in the camp scoffing at Judith Miller and Matt Cooper for protecting their sources so religiously. Here was a prime journalistic coup - a national security scandal in the upper reaches of the White House - that major reporters were just sitting on out of adherence to some warped delusion of grandeur, I thought.
However, given time to think about all the implications I slowly started coming around to the other side. Laura Rozen finally crystallized in my mind exactly why this is important:
Every time a newspaper like the New York Times publishes a leaked Iraq war plan, or the like, the reporter who has been leaked such information has technically been witness to a crime (unauthorized disclosure of protected US information from their anonymous source). Does it really serve the American public interest for such leaks to dry up? Does the public have an interest in knowing? Or will US prosecutors now feel they have a right to call on reporters as witnesses to these crimes right from the get go? If you appreciate that kind of reporting, you might recognize what I believe has just gone up in smoke here. Would it be better if Seymour Hersh decided to garden?
The kicker here is that, the law doesn't recognize who's on the side of the angels at any particular moment. It just recognizes when a law has been broken.
Posted by ben at July 6, 2005 10:50 PM